I stumbled upon three paper back books tied together at the base thrift
shop, all authored by Barbara Tuchman ‘The Guns of August”, ‘The
Zimmerman Telegram” and “Stillwell, American Involvement in China 1910 to 1945”. All fantastic historical novels about world history starting
shortly before WWI and in the latter novel ending when Vinegar Joe died
just after WWII. I was fascinated by her research and writing so
connecting the dots between the Stillwell book and my own experiance with CIA and Vietnam I have come to believe the following:

It is my contention that we would not have gotten involved in Vietnam if
it had not been for CIA being spoon fed “intelligence” from Claire
Chanualt, Chang Ki Check and Madam Chang. The trio stood to profit
handsomely from fomenting unrest in that part of the world. Vinegar Joe
Stillwell did not trust any of them because he suspected that as they
were getting arms from the US during WWII and then letting the enemy
steal them, for under the table payments to their Swiss Bank accounts. By the time Stillwell died just after WWII the trio were all multi
millionaires. Of course, Claire went to Taiwan with the Changs, he had
found a gravy train and some believe a lover. The trio kept feeding the
line that China’s objective was to overrun the all of Indochina thereby
getting the rice bowl they needed to feed their starving masses. By selling that “intelligence” to various contacts within the US
government, and Chang selling the idea that he still had an organization
of agents all over mainland China, CIA was lazy they did not or could not
verify Chang’s “intelligence” because it came free. Mean while CIA
funded CAT the Taiwan airline and equipped it with C-46’s, C-47’s and
later some DC6’s of course Claire Chanualt was at the head. Later they
spun off Air America and a bunch of other fronts like Bangkok Contract
Services Inc. all funded by CIA and they were paid well. They had been
paid to recover the B-26’s from Dien Bien Foo and store and maintain them for years they also built an aircraft factory that converted the C-46’s with more modern engines, Hamilton Standard props replacing the un
reliable Curtiss Electrics and flex hydraulic lines where there had been
hard lines with flex joints that had always been a problem, they ended up
with a very reliable airplane. That month that I flew almost 300 hrs in
one of them we only had a few write ups and they were minor. Yes the
trio had built an empire at our expense via the CIA.
Eventually the myth that China was about to launch a major attack to over run Indochina became US policy and we realizing that we could not protect Laos with out involving one or more of the countries we would have to over fly to do so we convinced Thailand to cooperate by having some bases there. There were a pair of U-2 pogos in the corner of the hanger when I got to Takhli I pointed at them and asked what are those they just shrugged. Chinese pilots from Taiwan were flying one way missions across China. I think we built several airbases in Thailand during the cold war that could be used as B-47 recovery bases on one way missions. In any case we bought the line that China was about to attack at any time. I think it was a lie because Russia was the major supporter of North Vietnam not China. So like so many in congress and the trio have profited from pushing a myth the Vietnam war started to save Indochina from being over run by China. As you know it never happened, even after we left Vietnam in shame, China can still buy rice cheaper than waging a war to confiscate it. In my mind the Vietnam war was one grand mistake largely brought on by the cheap “intelligence” from the trio… Bob